Hey Guys,
Following your discussions on our forum under “Changes from October Contest” and “Separate final test cases for Challenge Question,” starting from October Challenge 2013, after a lot of deliberation with our problem setting panel, we will be making a few changes in the way the scores for the challenge problem are being calculated:
- The score that you will see during the contest will only be partial (obtained on 20% of the test data).
- The submissions will be re-judged at the end of the contest to get full score (obtained on the whole test data).
- The number of submissions that one can make during the contest on the problem will be limited to 500.
This will be applicable for long challenges starting from October Challenge 2013. However, these are only provisional and we may change them based on the feedback that we receive from you guys.
How do these changes affect me?
In two simple ways:
- The rank table you see after the contest will not be final and will be subjected to change, after re-judging the submissions for the challenge problem.
- It may take us some time to declare the final winners and the updated rank tables.
- You will not be able to make more than 500 submissions for the problem during the contest.
Whatever you think of the above mentioned changes, do share with us.
Gear up for the October Challenge 2013 with a pinch of new rules to spice it up.
All the best.
Regards,
Rudreshwar,
Team CodeChef
what if i get a W.A or TLE on the final test cases…and my initial(partial) test cases get passed…i will get a 0?while throughout the cotest ill think i m getting a good score…not good :-/
If a 0 is given in such cases then it is not good.
In general it is nice to be aware of one’s ranking during the contest. This was a attractive feature of codechef long contest.
No. The tests will run on all the data. Only the score for 20% of data will be shown only if it passes all the test data.
One thing i would suggest is run the code on all test cases but show the score for only for 20% of test cases. The advantage of this will be that people will know before hand if their code gets accepted or rejected for all test cases before the contest gets over. It will be really frustrating solving a question for 2-3 days and then getting TLE or some other error on the remainder of the test cases if they are judged later.
Reason for doing the 20% thing is that many people write scripts using various techniques such that they get an idea about the test cases and they modify their code according to the test data.
If the code is checked for all the cases then that malpractice will be continued..
This is precisely what is going to happen. 🙂
This is precisely what is going to happen. 🙂
Yes, that’s exactly how things will be implemented (as far as I am aware): a submission will be judged on all the test files, but only the score of 20% of the test files (chosen by the problem setter) will be displayed. Thus, in order to get “Correct Answer” a submission will need to pass all the test files, not just the 20% for which a score will be shown.
However, due to technical reasons, all the submissions will also be rejudged at the end of the contest (on the same test files as during the contest) – after rejudging the real score will be shown (for 100% of the test files).
This means that it is possible to get “Correct Answer” during the contest and, after rejudging, you may get TLE (so you should be a bit more careful with the time limits). However, unless you use some time-dependent rand seeds, if you get “Correct Answer” during the contest, you cannot get “Wrong answer” or “Runtime error” after rejudging (the worst that can happen is to get TLE, as I said, but that can be prevented by not using the full time limit available to your program).
there is an other option >> what if we use two different set of complete test cases(100% rather than 20%), one set will be used during the contest and other set for final evaluation, where if one’s code passes the set used during the contest, the it would also pass the set used after the contest (i.e., on second set). By this way the user will be guaranteed that he won’t get a zero score, and the final test cases set is also hidden.
one thing I want to suggest…more points for hard problems and less for easy problems…
This has been debated. But we are not sure how this is going to change anything?
There are possibilities that someone who solved the hard one is finding difficulty in easy one… 🙂
🙂 Yes. But then do we really want to consider that possibility? In fact the present pattern will make him strive harder to solve it over a period of 10 days.
Yes. You can try it for short contests, like Topcoder and codeforces.
limit of 500 attempts is for a single question right 😮 ??
Yes, it is for single question.